A year later, supercommittee cautiously optimistic

It’s now a year since the special congressional supercommittee failed to come up with a deficit-reduction plan. But with the dismal progress made since on its agenda, that milestone took even one of its own members by surprise.

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With the nation’s debt problems at the top of the to-do list in 2011, Congress created the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction and gave it a Nov. 23 deadline to hammer out a deal to balance the budget or face automatic, across-the-board spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, including $500 billion in cuts to the Defense Department.

Now, more than 365 days and an election cycle later, there’s still no deal and another ominous deadline is barreling down on Congress: If it can’t come up with a deal by the end of the lame-duck session, sequestration will go into effect on Jan. 2.

“Yes, I’m disappointed,” said Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “I’d hoped that we could resolve these issues in the supercommittee. Hopefully, the election will now provide some momentum to an agreement. A lot of the issues that prevented us from reaching an agreement in the supercommittee were debated in this past campaign. The president was very clear you need to take a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, meaning a mix of budget cuts but also revenue. And so not only did he win, but the exit polls show he got a strong majority of Americans in support of his approach.”

“The supercommittee couldn’t reach a deal because at that time Republicans were more interested in protecting the wealthy from paying a nickel more than in putting real, score-able revenue on the table,” said Murray’s spokesman, Matt McAlvanah. The important update on the one-year anniversary of the failure of the supercommittee, he said, is that, “Thankfully, we have had an election since then in which the American people clearly repudiated their approach.”

That election, in theory, should have resolved some of the stumbling blocks that Hensarling described in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal at the time of the failure.

“Ultimately,” he wrote, “the committee did not succeed because we could not bridge the gap between two dramatically competing visions of the role government should play in a free society, the proper purpose and design of the social safety net, and the fundamentals of job creation and economic growth.”

Still, the same divisions that tripped up the supercommittee are in play — although Democrats believe that the reelection of President Barack Obama has given them a mandate to demand higher taxes on the rich.

Readers' Comments (7)

President Barack Hussein Obama will have to lead in the budget negotiations. He cannot just blame Bush while defending increased spending, shielding old entitlement programs from reform, and enacting new entitlement programs like Obamacare, indefinitely. He has his new political mandate. Will he use it for maintaining the White House policy status quo, and continuing to weaken the federal government's fiscal accounts situation even more? He knows little of business and economics and seldom makes sense on federal government budget-related matters. It remains to be seen if he will change from populist demagogue to statesman when it comes to addressing the latest federal government "fiscal cliff."

We can no longer afford to be everyone's protector and 'spread democracy' around the world. Not sure how that got started, there is no reference in the Constitution. Stop the blank checks to the military and foreign aid.

If cutting the self-perpetuating government can only be done by cliffs due to political weakness, then let it happen.

I can only hope that a tax code cliff will be set whereby the tax code will be completely reset again with lower rates and no exceptions and leave no room for lobbyists and spineless politicians. Americans are demanding results and term limits and then get out of office and go back to doing a real job of some value.

There is no better deal out there than letting all the tax cuts expire, and letting the sequestration happen. So far no one has proposed an alternative, let alone a better alternative. What i hear is let us raise fewer taxes and cut spending less, which means continued high deficits until the economy implodes. What is clear is that no one is serious.

The President has failed to lead. The congress has failed. The Senate and their leader are a disgrace.

Why are there any greater expectations now? More taxes, more spending, more people dependent on government for something and amnesty for any illegal who can cast a vote. History should not treat any of these incompetents well but who is editing our history books?